Hast Thou Scars?

Hast Thou Scars?

Selflessness and short suffering Offered by Doug Blair, Kitchener ON

Brebeuf, Ending

I wonder what price

For this journey

From textbook

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To strange tongue

Tall pine

From abbey

And penance

To portage

And comrades

All hardy in line.

The trek to

The New World

So dazzling

The ocean skies

Beckoning on 2

And red faces

Stare at our larder

And implements

Toted so long.

They sense

There is help

In this process

The prayers

Ministrations so new

The children

All laugh in the stories

While parents see 3

Snows to get through

While parents tend

Fields of the maize corn

And cut needful pelts

From wild friends

And murmer

Of enemies looming

Will our Jesus

Ably defend?

Then quickly

The arrows

And shrieking 4

The night sky

So vast

Turned bright red

And we to

The last rites

Committals

To honour

Huronia’s dead.

Tomorrow

The hostiles so numerous

Will this be

The price of it all?

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The totem

And torture and taunting

The worst evidence

Of Man’s Fall?

Dear Father

I rest in your presence

A strange

Interlude in this war

Afford me

The calm and the courage

To bless you

As never before. (1649) 6

Isaac Jogues (1607-1646)

We miss the historical writings of Pierre Berton. In one of his books he tells the story of the Jesuit Isaac Jogues who was killed in New York state (Auriesville) through treachery in 1646. He was one of the six eventually canonized as the martyrs of Huronia, most notable being Brebeuf and Lalemant (1649).

As Berton tells the story (The Wild Frontier) this young Frenchman entered The Society of Jesus with visions of martyrdom, almost chronically so. His early stay in Huronia around Midland was fraught with misunderstanding. The black robes seemed to hover around death giving baptism and last rites to doomed sick babies and elderly. The very act of prayer and sprinkling was regarded as a form of witchcraft by the natives. Nothing was more loathsome than a witch. This earned Jogue his first near-death experience - running the gauntlet and suffering crushing or amputation of most fingers.

The black robes also had the unenviable position of bringing with them strains of disease such as influenza and TB. Jogues' life reads as a

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string of mission travels through tortuous environments and captures, at one point enslaved by the Mohawks and ultimately adopted through sympathy. Meanwhile the trade strife between French and Dutch continued with alliances involving the Hurons, Iroquois, Mohawk and Algonkian.

The Dutch were ultimately instrumental in securing his freedom and shipping him back to France via Cromwell's England (an unenviable passage for a Catholic). Jogues was almost unwilling to leave because of his new convert charges: '...who in his absence would console the French captives, who absolve the penitent, who remind the christened Huron of his duty, who baptize them dying, encourage them in their torments, who cleanse the infants in the saving water, who provide for the salvation of the dying adult? Divine Providence had placed him in the hands of the savages for these specific purposes...'

It is interesting to note that Jogues always made it a practice to carry on his person a crude wooden cross and a copy of the Epistle to the Hebrews. With these he felt well equipped for any emergency.

Back in France he reported with his memoirs to the Jesuits and to the Monarchy, but longed for a return to the New World, renewed in supplies and the hope of leverage to effect a lasting peace among the aboriginals. He set sail in 1644.

Jogues' travels thereafter appear unceremonious. He had so toughened to the wilderness experience that the wild was no longer an aspect of daily martyrdom to him. He longed for the great and final expression of his love for the cause of Jesus.

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Sadly it came in the midst of vacillating peace negotiations, near the source of the Richelieu River, and a questionable dinner invitation and sudden assault with tomahawk.

The experience of evisceration and burning was to be that of Brebeuf and Lalemant three years later. at January 13, 2011

The Good White Doctor

The old missionary continued the trek, ravages of malaria notwithstanding. His stretcher bearers manifested almost a woman's touch when the spells came on. There were numerous villages yet to be visited.

His reputation these days had always preceded him. Coming into a clearing he would be gladdened by the happy faces, the singing children and the studious though somewhat guarded faces of the elders.

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Medicines would be distributed. In measured hours he would get himself upright and dress open wounds; relieve toothaches; set and splint fractures; consult the women on the progress of their pregnancies.

A modest supper, usually from his own caravan's supply, with tea and biscuits served generously around, would always settle the Good Doctor for the evening's event.

Word had traveled to each community that he carried with him a magical "light box which told stories up against a white sheet". This of course was a rudimentary projector equipped with transparencies to assist in the presentation of a Gospel message. All the basics were addressed: the miraculous birth, the sinless youth, the baptism and wilderness testing, the happy ministrations of mercy and absolution at the Lake side, the growing opposition of hypocrisy, the vacillation of His followers, the anguish of resolve in the garden, the hill-top death, the empty tomb, the joyful new community thrilled with the reality of resurrection.

For the Doctor, David Livingstone, the focus had to be the Grand Old Story. Of course he would minister to the people's needs and graciously endeavour to make each one feel included. But in the Dark Continent, with death just around the corner in a thousand different ways, souls were the thing...and Jesus the only gift for such soul hunger.

On the last morning, the servants found the Good Doctor, kneeling bed-side in the posture of prayer. Arrangements were made to bury his heart right there in the land which he loved and served. The corpse was carried to the coast over a matter of weeks. His remains were identified by the scars of the large wound on the shoulder inflicted years earlier by lion attack.

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Visitors now find Livingstone's remains commemorated in a focal place in Westminster Abbey.

It was said that for two generations following, in the East African territory, it was only necessary to mention the Good White Doctor. Everyone knew Livingstone was meant by the term. at May 27, 2011

Thinking of some in the Darkness Struggling with life’s bitter task

Wondering of meals and of shelter

Simplest needs all they might ask.

Elders could shine for a moment

Death took their import away.

Might I now travel some marked path

Gospel Good News to portray?

Never to be again lonely

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Never to pine over guilt

Never to know of a Better Friend bold

Seeing a Love Kingdom built.

Are they less worthy of comfort?

Are they so blind as not see?

Christ in His travels

And Christ in His pain

Drawing, as He did to me?

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